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nordehartet · 4 months

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Aldnoah.zero wasn't that good, lol.

Long have I held Aldnoah.Zero as one of my all time favorites (as well as the primer for my love for Mecha anime), but after this last re-watch, I've got to say, It's not that great as I remembered.

The first season by itself was pretty contained, topped off with a crazy cliff hanger. Sick fights with impossible odds debunked by logic and intellect, I ended up learning a little bit about science from the show too. The characters were somewhat likable, no real downers anywhere in the cast, and everyone had some sort of connection to each other. The plot wasn't THAT convoluted, and there was little to no fanservice!

The second season, however, took the original cast, put them all on the character development back burner, introduced a whole bunch of new characters (all of which who ended up dying, or being forgotten about in the epilogue), and gave us a bunch action sequences with little impact to the actual plot.

SPOILER SECTION

I will admit, many of the fights were pretty cool (the laser vs. artillery one was one of my favorites), but it felt like they all meant nothing. When Slaine destroyed the UFE space station, it seemed to have little to no repercussion to the UFE. When the 3 Counts that teamed up seemingly lead to nothing, there was no shakeup for the new Earth Space Empire. We keep seeing (AND HEARING) that the UFE are using the Deucalion as pawns, but literally nothing is being done about it. Realistically, yes, I see why you couldn't particularly trust Deucalion, but it's a plot point is brought up every other episode that adds nothing to the final product. It's like they're giving screen time to characters that don't really need it.

END SPOILER SECTION

Which brings me to my next point. WAY too many characters, and too LITTLE backstory for me to care about them. The main cast is still around taking up screen time, and the new cast is trying to make sure that we care that they relate to our protagonist in some way. It's too many characters with not enough runtime. Maybe a flashback to their supposedly rough lives would have made me like them more, but as it stands, I find it hard it hard to care

One new character that is generally dislikable got a solo bath scene too, which is.... fine... I guess... but it's like they were trying to make me care about her with her boobs personality. This is the scene where we see her (quite literally) reflecting on her goal, and placing this scene with in a bath left little to the imagination, and little to be desired. It only took away from her pain. It seems that they used fan service to get my attention, and I can probably say this safely because there is no fan service at all other than one beach sequence at the beginning of the second season.

SPOILER AGAIN HAHA

This could all have been fine... if it wasn't for the fact that the final battle between our two main characters got DEUS EX MACHINA'd in their final fight. This whole show we have seen Inaho out smart every single Vers Cataphract, either by his own witt, or with the assistance of his left eye. But in the final fight, Slaine's "Predictive imaging" gets knocked out by a stray bullet?!??!?!?!?!

The final fight just becomes a battle of brute force with swords (which is cool don't get me wrong, can't have a space mecha without a sword fight), and betrays the whole reason why I liked this show. THAT and masterpieces that Hirano Sawano and Mizuki craft for me to bang my head to at every fight.

END SPOILER SECTION

I loved this show when I was younger, and I re-watched the first season so many times. It was the show I could just put on in the background and know I would enjoy it, but since sitting through and paying attention to what was actually going on, I let down by the second season, as it could have been something awesome.

TLDR; Don't bother with the second season, unless you wanna bang your head to some Sawano against an orange kataphrakt, as you watch the cute bastard princess trip in her wheel chair in a space station more than once.

#anime #aldnoah.zero #mecha #rambles

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